“FREEZE!” – In Camera Editing

Those of you who are old enough to remember the days of VHS home movie making might also recall the term “in camera editing”. This technique would involve pausing the camcorder at each cut and continuing your scene from a new angle, making all of your scene edits within the camera.

BS Entertainment Films suggests continuing that “in camera edit” technique into your low budget digital film. But instead of literally trying to cut together the scenes within the camera, they use the term FREEZE! to stop the action, move the camera and shoot from another angle to create a ‘multi camera’ effect and allowing faster editing later in post.

If there’s motion involved with your scene, I’d recommend directing your talent to restart the movement a few seconds before the freeze, overlapping a few seconds of the action movements between your cuts. This will insure that you get smooth action while cutting the shots together in your final edit.

This trick takes a little pre-planning but can save hours of time in post editing!